Dear Travel Snobs

Dear Snobs:

I know. You are worried because here I am writing about something apolitical. Maybe I had a stroke in my sleep that reset my brain to more pleasant topics. Did I say pleasant?

Yes, I know. You went on a 5 day luxury tour of XYZ country and you think I am a barbarian for craving ice, cheap booze, toilets that I understand, and great hunks of affordable beef? You would never eat a hamburger in Europe, you say with haughty assurance. Or, perhaps you read a travel article in the paper that disagrees with my experience last week? Oh, well.

Ha. I have suffered. Suffered, I tell you.

 The older I get, the less that I like "travel." I want vacations! Nice vacations. I don't want to have to walk 10 miles because I got lost. I want to walk one mile for exercise. In a tropical paradise. With a margarita in hand.

Here is budget travel in a nutshell: I have slept on trains, planes, and in automobiles; slept on ferry decks -- right on the wooden floor; slept in train stations on benches. Slept at rest areas. 

I have been lost everywhere; been unable to figure out how to use a telephone -- numbers of times; driven down streets that were so narrow I was in danger of losing the side mirrors of a small car; taken a ferry to an isolated spot and realized there was no return ferry; eaten brains by accident; accidentally gotten in line to board a ferry going God only knows where and had to drive over the barriers to get out of said line... 

I have peed in parking lots, by the side of the road, in national parks, clean restrooms, dirty restrooms... I have used men's restrooms. And, I have gone poo-poo in public toilets at night that no lighting! None! I had to guess if my waste products were going in the toilet or landing on the floor. 

This is a good place to say that I am a country girl who grew up to be a woman with a weak bladder. I will pee anywhere. My husband is a city boy. He can hardly bear to use the bathroom in any public area. Me peeing in a parking lot almost killed him. He's never been the same since. But, I digress.

I peed all over myself using an unlit public toilet in a park and had to walk right out soaking wet.

​My one goal in life... I repeat: My one goal was never be defeated by a toilet. 

I vowed that I would figure out how to flush even the most unusual toilet no matter where I was. Whether it be a toilet with a chain, a foot pedal, a lever cleverly hidden somewhere or a squatter, I was determined to never be defeated by a toilet. 

But I was defeated in a park bathroom where it was too dark to even find the handle or the chain or the foot pedal or the lever to flush the toilet.

 I failed to achieve this one goal. Flushing every time. I had to give up. This was before cell phones. Were it to happen today, I would have the flashlight on my phone.

Which makes me wonder why in hell I didn't travel with a flashlight!

Love, Vivian

PS Have fun on your journeys! Dedicated to Lyman and Jen Elliot!